While John Kirk teaches Keynesian and classical economic theory, his students
are as likely to find their textbook is “Labor’s Untold Story”
as a drier, more conservative tome. Written by historian Herbert J. Morais
and feature writer Richard O. Boyer, Labor’s Untold Story was originally
published in 1955 by Cameron Associates, a leftwing publisher, at the
height of Cold War hysteria. Then, in the middle of the 1969 national
General Electric strike, the book was republished by the United Electrical
Workers, one of the country’s most progressive unions.

It
is a gripping, eye-opening, well-documented account of the American labor
movement from its beginnings through the mid-1950s. The book brings alive
the great figures and achievements of working class history, like Sacco
and Vanzetti, the Molly Maguires, and Albert Parsons and the Haymarket
martyrs who began the movement for the 8-hour day.

Then-UE
General Secretary James Matles said “it reads like an adventure
as it tells the real history of the union movement in America." For
Kirk, “that book made a major change in my whole outlook on life.
I realized, what makes a difference in our lives isn’t so much who’s
President. Unions and the labor movement have a much greater impact on
working people.”

Part
of the reason why Labor’s Untold Story is on his syllabus is that
the lives of working people in general are absent from mainstream histories.
“I bring in a lot of labor history,” Kirk says. “I use
Gerald Hunt’s Laboring for Rights, or then Monopoly Capital, by
Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, so that students can get some understanding
of a Marxist approach to economics. Then we’ll go on to John Maynard
Keynes and classical economic theory. There is more than one way of looking
at the world, even if more radical perspectives are often excised from
the accepted curriculum. And our students can only understand where they
are by finding out how they got there.”

With
that perspective, it’s not surprising that Kirk has been a union
activist almost since his university days, and that he came up during
the ferment and turmoil of the 1960s. Son of a reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle, Kirk grew up in Redwood City. He went to the University of
California in Berkeley, and graduated in 1964, just months before the
campus was shaken by the first of the 1960s’ great student revolts
– the Free Speech Movement. He then got his masters degree in economics
at San Jose State University.

When
he finished, Kirk began applying for teaching jobs, but only one community
college district was hiring, for positions in the Imperial Valley. So
he and his wife moved to Brawley, one of 25 new faculty members. “We
were paid $6700 a year to start,” he remembers, “so a bunch
of us young people got on the negotiating team, and won a $9000 salary,
a significant raise.”

Nevertheless,
after completing his two-year commitment to the community college there,
he and his wife decided to return to the Bay Area. One can only imagine
that the trustees were not sorry to see him go.

After
spending the next year as a freeway flyer, Kirk was hired as a fulltime
instructor at College of San Mateo. But after working a year, he was fired
to allow the return of another teacher who’d gone off to law school.
Kirk didn’t do anything to contest his termination for a year, after
being told by a lawyer for the California Teachers Association that nothing
could be done.

That
was when he met Pat Manning, who held a PhD in African history, and was
the son of John Manning, who worked for many years for the World Federation
of Trade Unions in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic.) Kirk
remembers admiring Manning because “he did all the budget work for
the AFT locals in the state. He showed me how we could have fought my
case.” And as a result, Manning became one of the greatest influences
on his life.

After
Kirk returned to College of San Mateo the next year, he and Manning formed
a formidable team. As activists in the California Federation of Teachers,
the two pulled together the organizing committee for what became the Community
College Council, and once it was up and running, convinced the federation
to come up with money to pay part time organizers.

The
two wanted the union to organize community college chapters, in preparation
for the passage of state collective bargaining legislation for higher
education. Ironically, the CTA won the first election at CSM, but four
years later, Kirk, Manning and others led the drive to certify the CFT
as the faculty bargaining agent.

Then,
just before the law changed in the mid-1970s, Kirk won tenure at CSM.
“The law originally was very contradictory, saying that if you taught
less than 60% you’d be temporary forever, and then said that no
one could be temporary for more than two semesters. I got my tenure just
before the Peralta decision, in which the Supreme Court said that if you’d
been teaching part time before 1967 you could become permanent, but if
you’d been hired later (as I was), you were lost.” In 1980,
after threatening the district with a suit for cutting his teaching load,
a new chancellor finally gave him a fulltime position.

“The
way I was treated motivated me to get active in the union, to keep others
from being treated the same way,” Kirk says. “I’ve held
every position in our union – president, executive secretary, chief
negotiator – but I’ve been doing grievances for 30 years.
I like it better. In negotiations you have to compromise. In grievances,
you get to win.”

One
of his first cases involved just the kind of issues that had propelled
him into activism. A teacher had been hired at Skyline College, in the
San Mateo district, and then on March 14 given a bad evaluation, and on
March 15 fired for it, the deadline for the district to terminate a probationary
employee. “The law at the time allowed administrators to terminate
a first-year teacher for no reason, and they wanted to create an open
position for someone else,” Kirk remembers. “The CTA lawyer
told him it was perfectly legal, so the teacher didn’t do anything
for a year. The he came to me, and we filed a grievance, showing that
the district had violated the mandatory dates for evaluations. PERB ruled
that the district board can decide whether or not to follow its own policy,
and a Superior Court judge upheld that decision, even wagging his finger
in the face of our lawyer, Bob Bezemek. But the State Court of Appeals
overturned that, and granted the first job protection for first-year teachers.”

Eventually
Kirk and the union negotiated better protections in the CFT local’s
contract, under which a probationary teacher can challenge a bad evaluation
on procedural grounds. “But at the time, it really affected a lot
of people who had very few rights,” he emphasizes. “We got
him $50,000, a lot of money in those days, and he took off for North Dakota.”

Union
grievances have also challenged unfair treatment of part timers. One part-time
counselor, who worked more than 60% of a full-time load, was fired despite
a positive evaluation, after the college president was reprimanded by
the Chancellor for allowing her to work over the limit. The union filed
a grievance for retaliation and the arbitrator agreed.

Other
grievances have highlighted basic issues of teachers’ rights. In
one, a faculty advisor to a Latino campus organization was reassigned
to the administration building demanding improved services for Latino
students. After the union filed a grievance challenging the reassignment,
an arbitrator ordered the administration to place her back in her original
position.

Today
Kirk is still doing grievances, with five headed toward arbitration. “We
have a bunch of new deans, who think they can reinterpret the contract.
Our chancellor is a former accountant, and our new president taught accounting,
so they have no conception of what a university or college really is,
and try to manage it like a corporation. Fortunately, we have a lot of
support from the faculty, and a very active membership.”

Kirk
hopes to instill that same activist spirit in his students. Doubtless
thinking of the chancellor, he assigns William Domhoff’s “Who
Rules America?” “I try to present them with evidence in class
that shows that the purpose of business is business – making the
maximum profit. If they can understand why inequality is such a part of
our system, they’ll figure out for themselves why unions are necessary.”